Meet Amberly Jones
Although this story is intended to introduce our new regional director, Amberly Jones, many of our readers in the OPO and research community are already familiar with her.
Jones brings 15 years of experience in the field of organ and tissue donation to IIAM. In 2007, she joined MTF, IIAM’s parent organization, as a Regional Director. In that position she gained experience in negotiating partner agreements, monitoring partner performance, and developing key strategic and tactical plans for process improvement with executive teams. Prior to joining MTF, she spent five years as a Hospital Development Coordinator at LifeQuest Organ Recovery Services in Gainesville, FL.
“Amberly is a seamless addition to our team,” said Gina Dunne Smith, Executive Director of IIAM. “Supportive to donor families, she recognizes the value of medical research and how researchers work with IIAM.”
Jones has been working closely with Smith and Mike Vara, IIAM’s Midwest and West Coast Regional Director, to understand the dynamics of IIAM, become familiar with the research and meet investigators working with donor organs and tissue.
Jones said, “It’s been fascinating to learn about solid organ research. The field of organ donation and transplantation has progressed so much since my time with LifeQuest, which was before DonorNet and electronic allocation. It has also been great to see how the introduction of the CMS measure for OPOs to benchmark their research processes has increased placements. Considering that IIAM has 58 OPO partners and over 100 research partners, I have a lot to learn. But collaboration is still the key to success, and it feels great to reconnect with former colleagues and friends.”
Smith added, “I have great confidence that Amberly’s vast experience will be an asset to her partner relations, and she is a welcome addition to the IIAM team!”